One thing, the V8 has a lower cog than the 4 cylinder right out of the box. Thats one of the nice things about V engines, and 90 degree V engines in particular. But, that just explains one particular point of getting the cog lower, not farther back. I too would be interested in how they moved it back. I can make guesses and theoreticals on how I would do it all day long, but that doesn't tell us how Mallet did it.

One thing I noticed about the Sol I saw was what looked like a quite large amount of room from the back of the engine to the firewall, compared to almost every other car I've ever seen. This might actually give room to slide everything back. And don't I remember somebody posting that Mallet mounted the engine two inches back?

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Im not sure about him mounting the engine two inches back so I can't comment on that. What I do know is that the rearend and trans doesn't change with the $18,000 conversion. So how weight distribution changes in the Sol I don't know, I knew that I read somewhere that it was closer to 50/50 with the change. Maybe with the top down it's closer to 50/50 since the some of the weight would now be closer to the rear. haha. Terpfan you and everyone else seem to have some good knowledge on the SOL conversion. It's good that we can all share some info..

jay

OEM balance figures are curb weight, or dry, based, aren't they? Mallet keeps saying - with a 200lb driver and a half tank of gas. Gasoline is about 6lbs per gallon, how big is the Solstice's tank?

Also, the LS2 is only about 185lbs heavier than the Ecotec (as far as I can tell from web searching), so that's not all that much weight, and it includes a heavy stock flywheel.

And the body panels on the Solstice are all metal, aren't they? Some composite panels, a lighter battery, lighter flywheel, and headers, and that 185lbs can be almost completely accounted for. If he did mount it further back, that would really help. But either way, add in a half tank of gas, top down, and a 200lb driver, and I'd say it seems reasonable.

Specific data would be nice though.

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TerpFan, I've seen the weights on a handful of Solstices, and the distribution for them at curb is between 52.1%-52.5%. These are straight on, plant built cars on certified scales. You may be off by a percent on your "to begin with" weights.

Even at a half tank of gas (essentially -30 lbs on the rear axle) the weight distribution doesn't change by that much - maybe only another half a percent (53%).

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Well, it sounds like I wasn't too far off then, if at all. I will have to try to find out where I read that. I haven't been able to run across it yet.

Jay